Withdrawal
by sapphire-child
Summary: Charlie speaks out for the first time about what going through Heroin withdrawal feels like. Mentions of Charlie/Claire.


**Title:** Withdrawal  
**Rating/warnings: **PG-13 for drug references and language  
**Summary: **Charlie speaks out for the first time about what going through Heroin withdrawal feels like. Slight C/C angle.  
**Original Post Date:** 03/04/2007  
**Spoilers:** The Moth, Confidence Man, Homecoming  
**Disclaimer:** DOM IS MINE. Lost however is not.

* * *

Withdrawal. 

It's the worst flu you've ever had multiplied by ten thousand. You sweat and shake and tremble and vomit and you feel like you want to just curl up and die because it'd be better than what you're going through.

_Anything_ would be better.

And with everything else that's happening in your body, your brain starts to freak out too. You get paranoid. And when I say paranoid I'm talking like "aliens are coming to abduct me" paranoid. You think that everybody KNOWS and that everyone is looking at you funny when really they probably just think that you're a total oddball.

My hands were always the first thing to go. Twiddling, tapping, trembling, shaking…I could never control them. Even now when I'm good and clean and sober my hands are _constantly_ moving. I've always been so bloody twitchy.

Trying to write when you're in withdrawal is pretty much impossible. Trying to write when you're high is almost as bad but not quite. The pen shakes and the ink goes everywhere – the letters are pretty much unrecognisable. It all ends up like hieroglyphics in the end – and my penmanship's bad enough sober anyway.

And then sometimes you just freak out. I've had tons of mini panic attacks, like, paranoid things or I've just gone "I need my fucking drugs RIGHT now or I'm going to fucking DIE". It might sound a bit overdramatic, but that's the kind of shit you think up when you're deprived of your stuff. You start to think you'd kill just to get a fix.

Some people do.

I never killed anyone per se, but I came close a few times when I bashed the utter shit out of people who were getting between me and a fix. Looking back later I could hardly believe myself – I'd never hit anyone before I started using. I just wasn't a violent sort of person – I'm still not.

Although I guess I can't really say that now that I've killed someone can I? But that wasn't for the drugs – that was for her.

The first fix after withdrawal – even if you were only deprived of the stuff for a short while – God. It always felt like heaven on earth. The stuff is like an electric shock. It races through your bloodstream at a million miles an hour – and it works even faster if you inject it instead of snorting it.

I remember, when we were kids, Liam always had a bit of a phobia about needles – he used to just about have panic attacks when flu season came around and we had to go and get our flu shots. I always thought it was ironic that he ended up depending on the very thing that he was so terrified of while I stuck with what was safer and less conspicuous than having dirty needles everywhere.

Safe. Huh. Like using Heroin could ever be truly safe.

We both came close to overdosing at one point or other – usually after something particularly depressing had happened. After Liam left for Australia was when I got really bad – some of the stuff I did to get myself a fix…it's just better off being forgotten.

The worst withdrawal of all was the one here, on the island. Even now I still have nightmares about the night after the cave in sometimes. I wake up sweating and shaking and feeling like I'm going to vomit and it feels like I'm going through it all over again. Jack stayed up all night with me, which made me feel like the worlds biggest git but there you go. He's a doctor, it's what he does for a living – did for a living I should say – and in any case, how could I have argued? The condition I was in I wasn't fit to do anything except lie there and imagine that I was dying.

After an entire night of vomiting up bile and sweating and then vomiting again and sweating and some more vomiting I actually felt a little bit better. It had been three days since I'd had a fix and my body was beginning to accept the fact that there wasn't anything left to feed its cravings. I didn't sleep at all – or if I did it was a fitful doze at best. And yet, when the sun got up I followed its lead, climbing onto my feet, swallowing half a bottle of aspirin and then washing myself up a bit – my hands seemed surprisingly steady.

Despite the shakiness of my legs and Jack's concerns that I would overexert myself, I volunteered to carry a load of water down to the beach and hand it out to those who had stayed behind to wait for rescue. It felt so much better to be actually _doing_ something instead of sitting and focusing on the feel of every single nerve end in my body screaming at me like they were being burned alive and electrocuted at the same time.

My previously raging headache dulled a little as I walked along the path to the beach, filling my lungs up with the chill morning air. The aspirin was working on all my aches and pains like a charm, the throbbing in my muscles began to dissipate too, as they stretched out and got used to working again.

It seemed like I was in a brand new world, so clear and bright and just… _different_ to the drug haze I'd been living in for so long. Every colour seemed brighter, every smile I gave seemed wider. By the time I walked out onto the beach with a backpack full of water bottles for the beach residents, I felt like I could take on the world.

Yeah there were times that day my hands got a bit shaky or I felt a wave of nausea. The aspirin began to wear off a bit eventually and the headache came back and all that but, you know what? It wasn't as bad as it could have been. I kept drinking all day, keeping my fluids up like Jack had told me to do. Well I did until Claire started teasing me anyway. She kept saying that I was going to be peeing for the rest of the day and wouldn't be able to help her with her laundry.

She really can be quite funny when she wants to be – I usually have a comeback for most of hers but she has stumped me a couple of times now. It's nice to have someone I can just have a normal conversation with here, you know? Just normal, fun, banter that doesn't necessarily have to mean anything, stuff that just fills the day and cements the relationship you have with them.

She never knew it but she was a huge help to me that day on the beach. She gave me something to do, someone to hang out with and about a million ways to occupy me and my thoughts. And I mean really, who wouldn't want to spend the day with someone as beautiful as Claire is? Her smile could melt the heart of a dictator.

Or an ex Heroin addict at the very least.


End file.
